How to Overcome the Top 3 Hiring Mistakes CEOs Make

How much time and effort do you spend in hiring? I can guarantee that it isn't enough and that the consequences are costly.?

Hiring the wrong person is one of the most common mistakes that I hear about from the CEOs I work with.?According to the Wall Street Journal Vistage Small Business CEO survey ,

"62% of CEOs report hiring challenges are impacting their ability to operate at full capacity"

Now, more than ever, finding and hiring the "right" people is of the utmost importance.?

Steve Jobs repeatedly commented that the success of Apple was directly attributable to how hard they worked at hiring the right people.

Barry Deutsch has more than 25 years of hiring experience, has participated in 1,000 executive search projects and thousands of hiring consulting projects, and co-authored the book, You're NOT the person I HIRED!

I shared some of what I learned from Barry a few months ago. As an expert on the subject and one of the top-performing speakers for Vistage Worldwide, Inc. , he offers insights and practices that, if implemented, can revolutionize a company's hiring process and overall productivity. Recently, he spoke to 30 of my Vistage members about the most reoccurring and harmful hiring mistakes.?

The most common breakdown is that most companies do NOT want to make significant investments of time and resources in hiring people.?

"My experience of twenty-five plus years in the Vistage community is that most Vistage-size companies don't want to work hard at this. We want it to be easy. We want to stick a generic job description on a generic job board and see candidates magically drop out of the rafters into our lap. We want to spend the least amount of time in interviewing that it takes. Most of us would rather procrastinate and pull our fingernails off than sit in an interview. We want to shove 10 pounds in a 5-pound bag to get the most out of people for the least amount of money. It just doesn't work that way, particularly in the kind of economy that we are in. It takes an enormous amount of effort to make the right hire. The biggest problem in hiring is that we just don't spend enough time on the process."?

Almost 20 years ago, Barry participated in an independent research project looking at hundreds of hires. The study resulted in "The Top 10 Mistakes CEOs and Senior Executives Make in Hiring". The top three mistakes related to hiring are connected to not putting the time necessary into the hiring process.?

Three Top Mistakes:?

1. We don't take the time upfront to define what we want from people. The traditional job description, as it usually is written, is a worthless tool to predict and manage performance. For any position that needs to be filled, the company needs to be able to answer the following: what are the outcomes, deliverables, expectations, results, and metrics that people will be measured by at periodic intervals?(30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 6 months, 9 months/year)? Currently, most companies use generic job descriptions that have nothing to do with performance.?
2. We don't shake the bushes hard enough to find the very best candidate. Most companies accept a candidate pool of 5% of the viable pool of people who would love to explore the job opportunity. Most companies use hope and luck to build a great team, and while that sometimes works, it often does not.?
3. We don't spend enough time in the interview process validating, vetting, and verifying every single claim, accomplishment, and gut feeling we have about the candidate. We make too many biased assumptions and act on misperceptions long before we have enough data on a candidate.?

Vistage Worldwide, Inc. Members shared their frustrations about the hiring process, echoing the dangers of not investing enough time in the hiring process.??

• Misrepresentation. When quickly surveyed, they reported that 30 to 100% of people lie, embellish or misrepresent their accomplishments and qualifications. Barry has found that the number is closer to 100% because every single candidate in an interview wants the job, and their goal is to do that, not accurately representing what they can and cannot do.??
• Measurement. Interview teams don't know how to measure success in a specific position because the expectations and standards aren't clear and/or they don't have direct experience in that domain.?
• Scarcity. The pool of candidates is shrinking, and wage competition makes it harder to find people.?
• Inconsistency. Not all members of the team are in alignment, so interview questions are interpreted differently.?

Barry knows that process improvement—how we define a job, find candidates, interview them, and evaluate their answers—solves these issues. These mistakes are easily remedied with targeted, practical actions. Soon, I'll share his wisdom on how to stop making the same mistakes and make sure you hire the right people!?